The credit card details of up to 19,000 British shoppers were published on the internet - where they could be found using a simple search on Google.

The details apparently originated from the website of a criminal gang in the Far East.

The list, obtained by the Mail, includes the names, home addresses and full card details of thousands of Visa, Mastercard and American Express customers.

Google's high-powered search engine inadvertently picked up the list during a 'crawl' of the web - allowing it to be seen and copied.